The need for all-optical signal processing techniques arises from electronics limits such as computing and transmission speed, electromagnetic interference, power consumption, and insufficient bandwidth for ultra-fast applications. Known optical processors show the possibility to fulfil all optical signal processing by means of diverse optical devices such as Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers (SOAs), Semiconductor Saturable Absorber Mirrors (SESAMs) and single or cascaded Nonlinear Optical Loop Mirrors (NOLMs).
Integrable solutions, like those mentioned above, are interesting for their applications but currently are not able to meet acceptable performance in terms of fast dynamics and reconfigurability.